TinkerX

After a couple year hiatus from writing in the legal marketing field, I’m back contributing to a publication I feel really good about. It’s called “Originate,” and the editors have already snagged some of the best legal marketing writers in the biz. Yes, yes. And me. Daryl Cross, Mark Beese and Adam Stock join Larry Bodine, Barry Schneider and me for monthly advice, tips, tools and deep wisdom about how to generate business for sole practitioners and small firms.This is not puff stuff. This is all highly usable, measurable, practical information from folks who have been in legal marketing for years, and who have helped firms generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in new revenue.My first set of articles (I’m on my fourth month at this point) focuses on setting up a specific, reliable sales pipeline. The idea being that you don’t get people to go from never having heard of you to being a dedicated client in one step. Same as you don’t go from “stranger” to “spouse” without some various activities in-between.I outline a reasonable sales pipeline in 12 steps. Yeah, I know. Sounds like a recovery program. Well… It is! It’s a way to recover from relying on luck and your golf game to get new business. Lawyers become addicted to *doing* the work, and forget to take the time necessary to *get* new work. This pipeline plan makes it easy to define a number of specific, discreet steps that will move potential clients ever closer to being die-hard customers and fans.Friends and readers of mine get a nice little $50 break when they sign up. So, if you know any attorneys who want to start working on their rainmaking game… send ‘em over here. 

Good new word from Word Spy: co-rumination. n. The extensive and repeated discussion, particularly among friends, of problems and negative feelings. Also: corumination.

This amuses me even more, considering the roots of the word “rumination.”

Howdy, y’all. Enjoying my vacation from my folks’ place in northern Tennessee. Lovely new home, new neighborhood and, for my Dad, a new office. So… now that we’re all caught up.

On an earlier post, Matt commented and asked for another writing exercise. I enjoy; a) writing exercises, and, b) taking requests. So here we go.

I’ve often said that creativity involves breaking things up and putting them back together again. But different like. So today’s exercise involves the matching of narrative elements with descriptive ones… differently.

1. Think of an activity you could possibly write a poem about. Let’s say… sailing.
2. List narrative elements that go along with that activity; basically, verbs. In our example: getting wet, pulling on ropes, steering, navigating, ringing that bell (I’m not a sailor… maybe I should have chosen differently… oh, well. Too late).
3. For each of those activities, write out some descriptive terms. For example, “navigating” might yield, “lost,” “concerned,” “confident,” “ambitious,” “anxious,” etc. At least one descriptive term or phrase for each action, please.
4. Now… as usual in these exercises, time to mix it up. Grab another activity. Let’s try… dancing.
5. List narrative elements for dancing: flirting, moving, shaking, jumping, gliding
6. Now the finisher: write a poem for that second activity where you match the descriptive terms of the first activity with the narrative elements of the second.

Why do this? Two reasons. First, many young (in their poetry) writers have a hard time distancing descriptions from their most commonplace elements. Not our fault; our brains always jump to the most reasonable, usual thing. So when you say, “glide across the dance floor,” you’re not programmed to think about sailing, but about feet, floors, shoes, partners, pretty clothes and (in my case) a rainbow fright wig.

The whole point of poetry is to bring new meaning to a situation for the reader. To expose something unexpected. If you can break apart descriptions from actions, you can start to find out how things truly (or at least poetically-truly) are, rather than just how they seem or are mundanely described.

The second reason for doing this involves extended metaphor; also a toughie. Most people can come up with a quick metaphor to describe one action. Doing so throughout the entire course of a poem is a bit trickier. This exercise forces you to do it; every element of the dance will need to be described in sailing terms.

And, as soon as you start thinking of it that way… there are possibilities, aren’t there? Does a nervous, first-date guy not “navigate” the dance floor? The sound of the band is like waves crashing around him. And he wants to bring the event home, safely. To harbor? To get a glass of punch? Or is “the safe harbor” going to be taking her to bed? Up to you.

Any way that you can force bits of assumption apart, and then bring them back together in new ways… that’s a good exersize. It’s what being a tinker is all about.

Abe Books has posted a neat article about stuff that used booksellers have found in books. Money, baseball cards, airline tickets and lots of personal notes.

Would make a cool scene for a story or novel, or a neat moment in a poem.

Where there’s smoke

The thunder came back for a third time last night.
Explosive light spattered behind and beyond,
too far up the county to preview the drums
with a white, sharpened, spark bone
jammed into your eyes.

Sitting, not sleeping (for how could we sleep?),
as the fists of the clouds beat down on the tent
that night stretches over our streets and our eyes
now pointless as shelter
from violent light.

Each rumble is different, a fingerprint boom.
One feels like a train rolling over our graves.
While the next is a branch cracking under your foot
in a forest of black fingered
dry-as-dust wood.

The first wakes us up and the next pulls us out
of our beds with a fist of sound gripping the sheets.
By the third… we’ve relaxed, and got milk for the wait
while mountains of air
converse with the heat.

They talk to us, too, of course. Querulous bombs.
The volume is such that it’s hard to make out
what the words are. But listening, closely, we hear:
“Don’t fear us — we’re only
the gentlest of signs.”

* * * * *

[with thanks to Shannon whose comment improved this]

Bad Pun

he defines “untied”
as “tied to nothing”

no hope of hope
no jump into a lake of cool
sweet summer peace
no rope swing leap
from earth to air to water

boys fly free

men tire
mourn
hang rubber
on a dying tree

I go back and read W.B. Yeats now and then. His stuff exemplifies a term that I’ve grown to love; creepy-cool. I recently read this by him:

The Dolls

A DOLL in the doll-maker’s house
Looks at the cradle and balls:
‘That is an insult to us.’
But the oldest of all the dolls
Who had seen, being kept for show,
Generations of his sort,
Out-screams the whole shelf: ‘Although
There’s not a man can report
Evil of this place,
The man and the woman bring
Hither to our disgrace,
A noisy and filthy thing.’
Hearing him groan and stretch
The doll-maker’s wife is aware
Her husband has heard the wretch,
And crouched by the arm of his chair,
She murmurs into his ear,
Head upon shoulder leant:
‘My dear, my dear, oh dear,
It was an accident.’

And it reminded me of something I wrote. Though I hadn’t remembered his when I wrote mine:

No pressure

Jenna collected bleak, broken dolls.
Snatched back from dumpsters, yard sales, consignments.
Blind socks full of rags.
Bare, pink plastic torsos.
Porcelain tea-cup heads, mapped with vein cracks.
Hair torn out, fingers chewed,
faces bleached, headless.
Smelling of powder, soap, sweat, paint and dirt.

She put them on shelves
in the light of her window.
Paired them up. Match-made them.
Gave each a place.
Made sure they were dusted
and nestled in families.
Sang them to sleep at night.
Smiled them awake.

Easy, so easy, to love what is broken.
No fear of failure.
No future of doubt.

They’re already ruined,
her cracked, shattered babies.
Do anything to them,
she’ll still be
their saint.

What is it about dolls…

Amazon has posted a video demo for its new eReader, the Kindle.

This has real potential. First of all, the device itself doesn’t look like hell. The early shots of the prototype looked… clunky. The one in the video, and in the Amazon store, though, seems OK. Some of the buttons and the keyboard still look a bit odd compared to standard UI stuff… but maybe (benefit of the doubt alert) its related to power savings, hardiness of the unit, whatever. It looks a bit geeky, but, then again, it is.

Features that make me wish it was cheaper than  $400:

• Free wireless hook-up. Yup. Amazon is eating the cost of cellular-network delivery (not Wi-Fi). So you just turn the thing on, connect to the Kindle store (and various other Web related destinations), browse for books, magazines, newspapers, etc. and buy ‘em.
• Automatic updating of subscriptions (magazines, newspapers, blogs, etc.)
• Email personal docs to the reader (MS Word, etc.)… for 10-cents per doc (I think).
• Click-through to definitions, Wikipedia entries and other reference sources
• Note-taking, book-marking, high-lighting, text/section clipping features
• Listen to MP3s and eAudiobooks (have to be uploaded via USB)
• Can hold 200-ish books

I already wrote about how I’ve been reading eBooks on my Palm/PocketPC for years. And so, for me, it will probably be awhile until I get one of these things (ie, until it costs waaaay less than a mobile computer that I need anyway for work, wireless phone, wireless web, etc.). So, for now, this falls under "really cool luxury." 

My guess is that (like Apple with the iPhone), in time, when more publishers are on board, the Kindle will come down in price, subsidized by Amazonian subsidies based on usage. It is, however, the first dedicated eBook reader I’d put on my Christmas list.

Buy it here

All communication intends to exchange meaning. "I’d like a cheeseburger with fries and a Coke." That conveys meaning from a hungry customer to a waitress or fry cook. And if the communication between customer and cook was reduced, let’s say, to the pushing of buttons with pictures of meal choices — as in a vending machine — we’d have communication that is almost perfectly mundane. By which I mean there is very little chance for interpretive meaning, only the exchange of explicit communicative chunks. "Almost perfect" because there’s a person on the other end of the process taking the mechanical order and doing the cooking. If a customer were to come in and push the "large fry" button 75 or 200 or 809 times in a row in quick succession, the cook might step out from the kitchen and make sure that there wasn’t a problem. Even in this simple example, there is room for interpretation at the edges.

And the edges are what poetry is all about.

If you want to make simple, declarative statements about feelings or beliefs… stick to prose. There’s no harm. Most of what I write is prose, and a good essay, rant, story or post is a joy forever.  But if you’re the type who is now thinking, "Yeah… I wonder how many times I’d need to mash the ‘fries’ button to get the cook to come out?" then you might be a poet.

Language is, of a necessity, symbolic. When I say, "It is cold," it doesn’t make it cold. It might not even be cold, by any reasonable assessment. When I change the words to, "I am cold," it can mean a couple of things, eh? Clearly, it can mean, "There is less heat in my environment than I am comfortable with." But we also use the term "cold" to mean emotionally distant, unloving, uncaring, etc.

The fact that one word, phrase, description or entire piece of writing can mean multiple things is what makes good poetry so beautiful. As humans, we like to see/make connections. We like solving puzzles. We make connections even where none are intended; how often have you looked at a cloud and thought, "That looks like a [whatever]." Our brains are programmed to seek meaning on multiple levels.

How is this useful in poetry? Well, let’s consider the "cold" thing again. If I simply say, "I am cold," without context, you can think either that I’d like to warm up, or that I’m emotionally distant. As soon as I provide some surroundings for this statement, though, you have more edges; more interpretive options:

I am cold
here in your bedroom.

Whoops! Hey… what?  OK. That’s weird, isn’t it? When "bedroom" is referenced in poetry (and much art) it is usually a place of warmth and connection. The poet is saying he’s cold (either lacking heat or feeling distant) in a place where both of those things are odd. It makes the interpretative process different and more interesting; there are more ways to put the pieces together, to make sense of the edges where meanings can cross. Let’s add another line:

I am cold
here in your bedroom.
Someone left the window open.

What’s going on now? Well… "window open" implies that the "cold" is possibly (more likely?) one related to temperature. We get cold when windows are open. But let’s check out that word, "Someone." Hmmm… Someone? Not "you" or "I." The two people we’d expect to be involved in a bedroom poem aren’t to blame. Let’s keep going.

I am cold
here in your bedroom.
Someone left the window open.
And the summer sun won’t touch me
on the dry, dark, hard wood floor.

Now it’s maybe getting contradictory and, possibly, a bit creepy. On the absolute surface level — no poetry intended — a reader could take this at face value and say, "OK. So a dude is sitting on the floor of his girlfriend’s room, and he’s out of the sun, so he’s cold. Big deal."

Right. But it’s not hard to see the edges in this one, is it? Why would the writer choose (and good poetry is all about word choices) to make the narrator cold in the summer? That’s a contrast, and contrast immediately shows of the edges between possible interpretations and makes us look for patterns and meaning. There’s even sun, which implies it’s day and not night, and probably not "cold" in an absolute sense. That is, at least, a strong implication.

So what else might be going on here? Always make the assumption that a poet is choosing his/her words with great care. You’ll do that when you write good poetry, so make the assumption. So… just like we asked questions last time about Shakespeare’s sonnet, let’s ask some questions:

• Who left the window open?
• Why is the narrator alone (apparently, at this point) in "your" bedroom?
• Why is the poem addressed to "you" and not "her" or "him?"
• Why is the narrator on the floor?
• Why use the word "touch" related to what the sun can/can’t do?
• Why use the word "won’t" for the sun’s touch — which implies intention on the part of the sun or avoidance on the part of the narrator — rather than "can’t?"
• Why use the words "dry," and "dark" to describe the floor, other than that "dark" emphasizes the lack of sun?
• Is it important that the floor is "hard wood?"

I’m intrigued. Are you intrigued? Whenever you read poetry, do so like a detective. Think about the words as if they are all clues to places where the poet has been and wants you to follow.

Most poets, myself included, *hate* explaining their work. The whole point is to let the reader pull out meaning and depth based on their interpretation. Explaining your own poetry is like starting a joke with the punchline or saying, "I’m going to tell you a neat, provocative mystery in which the main character’s sister is the killer." Blech. But today, because we are doing lessons, there will be some explication of the aforementioned questions: 

• Who left the window open? Can’t be "me" (the narrator) or "you" (the object of the poem). Must be someone else. Not normally a comfortable implication in a poem. Probably a cause for stress or drama between "me" and "you."
• Why is the narrator alone (apparently, at this point) in "your" bedroom? Maybe "you" left. Maybe "you" are still there, but are very quiet (also a disturbing possibility). Maybe "you" didn’t expect me. Maybe "you" are out with whomever opened the window.
• Why is the poem addressed to "you" and not "her" or "him?" Using the 2nd person implies familiarity. It also makes the reader feel more like an outsider, as the use of the 3rd person ("I am cold / here in her bedroom") would imply that the narrator expects the piece to be read/seen by the reader. In the 2nd person, there is a feeling of overhearing a conversation between two others, rather than reading something explicitly public. The "you" is the intended recpient, the object of the communication. This is subtle, sure… but important.
• Why is the narrator on the floor? "Bedroom" implies, pretty strongly, one piece of furniture: a bed. The implication is that he’s not using the one thing that makes a bedroom a bedroom. This is a strong clue that something is wrong or not comfortable. Why would the narrator avoid a bed in a bedroom? Especially if he is cold, and beds are used to keep warm.
• Why use the word "touch" related to what the sun can/can’t do? The sun doesn’t really "touch" us. The light/heat do. But "touch" is a verb that implies personal, often emotional or intimate contact. So the lack of touch is another clue that there is some kind of personal, intimate lack here.
  
• Why use the word "won’t" for the sun’s touch? The sun doesn’t make choices in reality. The sun doesn’t withhold its "touch" based on some kind of consciousness. So we’re left to make one or two assumptions. Either the narrator is anthropomorphizing the sun and it’s affect on him (cold) — which is a sign of psychological distress — or the narrator is avoiding the sun’s touch on purpose. "It won’t touch me," implies a choice made, rather than "It can’t touch me," which implies an unavoidable situation.
• Why use the words "dry," and "dark" to describe the floor? Sure, dark reinforces the lack of sun’s touch. But we’ve already made the assumption that the narrator has chosen to be on the floor, and has possibly, deliberately picked his spot. If the floor is, itself, dry and dark, what is that in contrast to? Why even describe the floor? Well, because it’s not the bed. The light, we assume, is touching the bed. And, while dryness is not necessarily associated with warmth, those romantic things that happen in beds are often moist; kissing, sweat, sex, etc.
• Is it important that the floor is "hard wood?" Well… if you’re looking for sexual references (and in a bedroom, that’s a good bet), "hard" has implications, as does "wood."

So, above and beyond the surface, narrative meaning… we now have someone addressing someone in a more personal way (2nd person object), alone in a place that would normally have another there, on the floor instead of the logical bed, avoiding touch purposefully, in a dry/dark place, with (let’s push this a bit, students) an errection.

Now… some of you are no doubt saying, "C’mon! That’s reading a lot into those word choices." Yep. And an argument I have time and time again with new readers of poetry is on the subject of reading more into a piece than was intended by the poet. First of all, assume that the poet intends the maximum number/levels of interpretation. It’s a good bet that he/she thought more about the writing of the piece than you are about the reading. Second, even if you do read something into the poem that wasn’t intentional… that’s ok. Part of the fun/joy or poetry is finding a picture of a dragon in a cloud that was painted to look like a bunny. I don’t know a poet out there who will complain if you find some extra, bonus meaning in their piece.

I’ll finish this poem next time, when we’ll cover tension and release (or the lack thereof) as poetic devices, and why you should aim for "frisson" as a poet. Until then, your assignment is to take a very simple, declarative phrase and embelish it with at least three phrases that put its surface meaning into question, or provide alternate contexts. Don’t worry about being "poetic." Just start with a phrase like:

The car is going fast.

And then think of three phrases that, in juxtaposition with the first, might cause a reader to ask some questions. Like:

• It’s making me sleepy
• Although it’s out of gas
• My mom’s a crazy driver

All of those phrases are somewhat unexpected when coupled with "the car is going fast." Go be unexpected on purpose.

My Team, Your Team has been getting a lot of link-love over the past few weeks. Which is super cool; it’s a fun game, and everyone in the world should play it and be in love and have puppies.

But the writers in the house need their fun, too. So here’s one we played back in the day (along with Alternate Lyrics Kung Fu):

Metaphor Mix-Up.

Best with at least 3 people, or in an email chain. 

1. Write down a decent metaphor/simile. Take a sentence or two if you need it, or even put it into a short poem. Something like:

   "Morning walks with Chump, the hound, left me feeling like a train that had been pulled off its tracks by a mad, furry, whuffling, slobbery locomotive."

2. Pass the metaphor on to the next person (and you get one from someone else in the chain)
3. Change one part of the metaphor, but leave the other untouched. The two parts of a metaphor are the tenor – the thing being described (in the example above, the walk with Chump) — and the vehicle – the thing used to make the description (the train). Example:

   "Morning walks with Chump, the hound, left me feeling like the harem slave to a short, hairy nabob."  or…

   "Conversations with my Unlce Frank left me feeling like a train that had been pulled off its tracks by a mad, furry, whuffling, slobery locomotive."

4. Pass it around again, until everyone in the game has touched everyone else’s metaphor. Make sure you keep the changes with the original (in email, that’s easy), so that the originator can see the progression of his/her metaphor.

That’s it. Sounds easy, but it’s not always. And it’s fun to do it with a time-limit if you’re in real life.

[nsfww = not safe for wussie work. There’s no porn here, but I will be using words like "shit," "crap" and "piss." You, your boss, the camera above your desk and the NSA have been warned] 

I have lots of arguments with people about the boundaries of crap.

Crap is the stuff that you don’t want to qualify as valuable or worth any effort at a particular moment. It’s not necessarily an insult. I often talk about "all my great crap," or, "the kind of crap you can get from Archie McPhee," or, "the bunch of crap left over after brunch… help youself."

Crap is not shit. If something is "shit," it’s worthless. As opposed to "the shit," which is roughly synonymous with my childhood, Boston slang term, "wicked pissah." In certain parts of New York (where I’ve spent a bunch o’ time), a "pisser" is also a good thing. "That Kenny… funny guy. His party last night was a pisser." Also, a "piss-cutter" can be good thing. I guess if something is strong enough to cut piss, it must be good. Yet "not giving a shit" and "being pissed off" are bad things. So… where are we on the relative value of bodily function metaphor? I won’t even start on f**k, as we all know that it now means everything and nothing.

But back to crap.

I have friends who think modern art is crap. Some think science fiction is crap, while others love it and think the term "sci-fi" is crap. Personally, I love Star Wars Episodes 4-6, and think that 1-3 are crap.

Mostly, though, the argument I hear is that "all this user created content on the Web is crap." When I point out that most of the professionally created content on the Web, on TV, in magazines, etc. is crap, too… I usually get a shrug and the reply, "Yeah. I suppose so. But there’s so much more crap on the Web."

My point about the relative positive/negative metaphoric value of words like crap, piss and f**k is that there is the same relative value placed on the crap itself. What is now part of the canon may once have been, from the point of view of authority, crap. This is not news. What also is not news is our sociological inability to cope with a fantastically different medium than the ones that have come before.

We see this in telco. Phones were the devils that would interrupt family time and cause people to lose the personal, face-to-face familiarity that is the all important glue of society. Never mind that we’d been writing letters for a couple thousand years. Letters good (thoughtful, intelligent, educated prose), phones bad (conversational, immediate, pedestrian). Then cell phones were bad because they’d do the same thing in public. Then they weren’t. Now people are complaining about Blackberries and other portable email readers. Give it five years, folks. The ettiquette will work itself out.

So there’s lots of stuff on the Web. And much of it (like this blog) is "amateur" content; ie, nobody pays us. Much of it is also, by traditional standards of authority, crap. Of course it is. To claim that most MySpace pages, YouTube videos or eBay items are anything but crap would be nonsensical. I’m not saying that they aren’t crap.

I’m saying that crap is OK. And that may be what the canonical guardians of traditional media are really afraid of finding out. That for many people, well… we like the crap. Yes, yes… required statement about the value of classics goes here. I’m a Lit Major, for the love of Proust. I read "A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu" in French. I’ve written 20-page essays on "The Wasteland." I’ve read Dickens that wasn’t a course requirement. I like classical music.

But I also like web comics. Which wouldn’t have existed without, well… the Web. Comics like (in no partiklar order):

• Cat and Girl
• XKCD
• Red Meat
• Homestar Runner
• Savage Chickens
• 30 Second Bunnies Theater Library
• Fredo and Pid’jin (Two Evil Pigeons, One World to Destroy)
• Gaping Void
• Indexed
• Dinosaur Comics

There are many more. OK, two of the above (Homestar and Bunny Theater) aren’t comics, per se, but cartoons; animation. So sue me. I love ‘em and they’re on my list.

My crap list 

Some will argue that a few (or all) of the above are the work of professionals. Just like reading the NYT on the Web, it’s OK. It’s not the medium that’s crap, it’s the bjillions of messages. But without the bjillions, there’s no Web. And if they couldn’t blog, post, comment and connect… they wouldn’t have spawned the messages above.

The medium is the message. And the medium now includes everyone. And you don’t get your crap without it being mixed in with everyone else’s. As I’ve said before, there’s not such thing as "user created content." Everybody is now a user. Stop worrying about it and enjoy. 

As seen here.

An interesting post over at Purple Motes about a street poet. Not a poet reciting his poetry on the street, but selling it sheet-by-sheet. Interesting.

Sometimes–depending on the occasion–when I’m asked, "What do you do?" I answer, "I’m a poet." Usually that gets a nice, blank stare. Then a response along the lines of, "No. Seriously." And then I chuckle and say, "Right. Seriously. I’m a poet." Which starts to get irritating; I admit this. I do it to remind people that we are not what we do from 9-5 (or 8-7). We are not the sum of our corporate selves. Sometimes. Some of us. Hopefully.

On a related note, I sold a poem. I’ve never sold one before (unless you could the 100 poems included in TaleWeaver). I’ve sold writing of mine, and have spent a decent chunk of my professional career being paid to write (ad copy, technical writing, brochure-ware, etc.). But that’s different than someone specifically paying you for one poem.

What was the poem? I can’t tell you. I can say it was a sonnet. I sold it off’n my Etsy store. The other things I’ve sold off there were two "Previous Life Bios for Your Cat."

Selling a poem like that was more meaningful, in many ways, than gigs I’ve made 100x the money off of. 

Passing 

"thanks."

the word eaten by wind
as I hold the heavy door
turn to catch a whiff
of brunette and hazel
and grey wool and
iPod

young young young
slight and slightly
curved

for less time than it takes
swung glass to shut me in
her out
I forget my headache
my debt, dead, day

in scent
in vanilla
in baby powder
something something something

something young

Dry

When the ocean fled
we were left with many dead
fish.

That Wednesday (Thursday in Japan)
when the seas just up and ran
the fishermen in fallen hulls
had one or two good raking days
of harvest. Bloated gulls
were everywhere and gorged
on mundane bass and trout
and monstrous, deep trench horrors
eye-stalks poking out
of yellow, running beaks.

What had been beach
was now just sandy path between
two dirt worlds
no spray, no salt, no scene
but earthy, constant fixity.

And you won’t sing for me.

I’ve been pimping TaleWeaver, my creativity/storytelling book/game for some time now. Between the newer one (which is better) on Lulu, and the one that got up on Amazon through no fault of my own a few years back, I’ve sold about 50 of the things, netting around $200. Which ain’t bad, considering I created the game as a personal gift for my wife and son. That dough just about paid for the sets I personally had printed/cut at Kinkos a few years ago for friends.

Clearly, though, I did not do it for the money. And I’m getting into some social spaces to see what kinds of benefits they have. At this point, here are my findings:

• MySpace: I can’t keep it up enough for it to matter. I’ve got multiple blogs on my own, and blogging from MySpace seems… odd to me. Maybe I’ll try just copying my posts from here, but that also seems lame. I really tried to get into some groups, but the ones that have anything interesting in terms of content have enormous numbers of users, and the signal-to-noise ratio is huge. I don’t have enough friends that use MySpace to make the "wall-to-wall" form of communication any kind of meaningful, though I can see how it would be for someone whose buddies are all in the space. Mostly I get random friend invites from strippers and bands. None of whom return my calls…

• LinkedIn: I’ve been using this site longer than any of the others. I have 67 direct connections as of the moment, all of whom I can actually claim to have known in real life or to have met online (eLationships). As of yet, it has been entirely worthless to me. I tried, several times, in my full-time consulting days, to establish clients or partners for projects. Some were in that first circle, some were one-step away, requiring an intro. Nothing came of any of it.
• Facebook: I’ve been on Facebook the least amount of time… and it is proving to be the most interesting to me. Why? Because I have connections there both from work (OCLC) and where I teach (CCAD). I’ve actually had days where I get two or three pings from the network, and I’m enjoying the kind of "casual / formal" feel. It’s formal, because everyong there has a current, meaningful reason to be connected. Casual, because not all the messages and moments are related to work/business, as is the case with LinkedIn.

So… Since I’m getting value from my Facebook account, I’m trying an experiment: I’m putting value back in. I found a widget that lets you upload files to your Facebook page. So I’ve put a free, PDF version of the TaleWeaver book and cards up there for download by anyone in my networks. And I put an ad stating such in the Facebook marketplace.

I’m testing to see if it does one of three things: 

1. Makes people happy to get a free download of something they find even marginally interesting.
2. Gets me more Facebook friends.
3. Moves more copies of TaleWeaver from my Lulu store.

I’m not really counting on any of this. I hope #1 happens, at least. I’ll report back later on the others if anything of note happens.

So… I think about blogging sometimes. Which is natural, as I do it and I work in a marketing role that involves new media and my background is in writing and… and… and.

Why do we write? All kinds of answers to that question. When I was studying it in school, the answer was, “To get better at writing.” To obtain an easy facility. To hone the craft. To develop the tools. You write so that you can actually write. Most people, obviously, can string words together. That’d different than being a really good writer.

I can make macaroni and cheese from a box. I can feed myself. I am not a chef. I am barely qualified to be considered a bad cook.

I’m not sure that’s why most people blog. Maybe it’s about the same impulse that compels keeping a journal. Not in my case, as I never kept a journal. For me, it really is about finding a nugget of an idea and writing around it. The expression of thoughts in a way so as to convey meaning clearly. It’s an exploration. It’s art + science. Like poetry, but different.

From Infocult, I got a pointer to a post at Webomatica on “Why blogging sours.”

First off… “Why I nearly quit” stories kinda crack me up. When I was smoking, we (smokers) would always talk about how many times we’d tried to stop. So what? You didn’t. Shut up. Can I bum one? A long, well thought-out blog post about how you almost quit blogging is like when beautiful people complain about how they used to have damaged hair or skin problems. Look buddy… I got 11 toes the hard way; seven on one foot and four on the other, so shut yer pie hole.
He goes through a litany of his issues. Like, “A front page Digg is awesome, but I admit to a sugar-high let down when I realize all those Diggers just checked out one or two articles and left.”

Yeah. You write a post about how you “almost” quit, and include a reference to a previous, front page Digg. Sweet. So all of us out here who are blogging along with a few or a few dozen readers and whose chosen topics make us about as likely to appear in a Paris Hilton video as to get a front page Digg are supposed to feel motivated to… suck on a taxi’s tailpipe? Nice motivational style.
He closes with these takeaways:

• Think long term rather than short term.
• Be prepared for the long haul.
• Don’t expect instant success.
• Don’t quit your day job on day one.
  
• Expect to work hard on quality content and quality networking.
• Blogging in a vacuum sucks.

Correct me if I’m wrong… but those first three say the same thing. And “don’t quit your day job on day one.” Uh… I know dozens of bloggers personally. None of them blog for a living. Zero. For a very few, blogging is now part of their traditional day job, but I’m not aware of anybody in my circle making their whole nut off the medium.

“Expect to work hard on quality content and quality networking.” OK. Yes. If you want to do something well, expect to work hard. That’s… very… uh… specific.

And the last bullet isn’t a takeaway. It’s an observation. I know I’m being snarky here, I just really am kinda tired and getting over a cold and know many writers who struggle with actual writing issues. And a guy who gets 37 comments on a post about how he sometimes doesn’t get many comments… well, it’s just cracking me up.

So… I read this page and was shaking my head and was going to not post today because it reaallly motivated me to not write. Feh.

Then I checked my WordPress dash for incoming links and found that somebody I’d never met/contacted had added me to his blogroll. As usual in the blogosphere, I have no specific idea why. It’s always nice, and (one assumes) it’s because the person enjoys your writing. So I checked out his blog, read a few posts (he put up at least one original poem, and that’s always good for the universe), and found (through random poking) a very nice piece on his definition of success. It boils down to “have joy without screwing with others’ joy.” My very loose re-wording, so please forgive me, Mr. Hopkins.

I grok that.

And his piece caromed off my earlier, depressing thoughts about the “sour blogging” post and how to avoid it. In this weird, new world of blogs, YouTube, wikis, email, IM, WoW, SecondLife, etc… you know what? I don’t really need to be Dugg. I don’t need to make money on my blog. I don’t need hundreds of readers. What’s my definition of success for this little portion of my life?

When, out of the blue, one quality guy like E.C. Hopkins adds me to his blogroll.

If that’s not enough joy to keep you blogging for another six months, hang it up for real.

That’s my takeaway.

Turns out I have something in common with the Wall Street Journal’s Jeffrey Zaslow: we’ve both been plagiarized…

If you haven’t heard, CBS News’ Katie Couric recently did a “Katie’s Notebook” piece, performed in the first person [”I still remember when I first got my library card…’] that, it turns out, was written by her producer.

Surprise, surprise. Katie’s stuff isn’t written by her.

Whoops. Turns more out, Katie’s producer, Melissa McNamara, didn’t even write it (bizarre twin plagiarism angle… oh dear). I’ve read about 15 different takes on the whole matter, and kinda like Slate’s tone/angle the best.

That’s the story. Fine. But here’s what none of the things I’ve read so far have offered… Something that you’ll get right here, only at TinkerX — the inside scoop (first person, written by me, not my producer) on what it’s like to be plagiarized.
I used to consult full-time. Now I do it a bit on the side (yes, my boss knows; I’m not that dumb… about that.) While consulting full-time, I wrote lots of articles and got lots of essays posted just about anywhere I could to get my name/email/URL out there. I did it in order to generate business, establish “my personal brand,” and get good SEO for my blog and company Web site. So… long story short, lots of Andy Havens’ marketing crud on the Web.

About two years ago, I get a call from a guy I’ve never met. But he knew me from some of my legal marketing articles. How cool. He recalled my particular (peculiar?) brand of wit and wisdom. He specifically recalled a piece I wrote for my good buddy Larry Bodine at the LawMarketing Portal back in 2004, about a year prior to his calling me.

He wanted to know if I was aware that another fellow was using this material, almost word-for-word, in his hand-outs at a professional marketing seminar.

Gulp. No. I was not.

My reader faxed me the materials. Yup. Almost exactly the same stuff. In fact, it even had the same cheesy clip-art that Larry pasted into the story (Hi, Larry!).

I contacted the fellow. I told him what I’d discovered and asked him what was up. He told me… that the piece had been put together by one of his subordinates.

It had his name on it. The name of his marketing firm was his name. The presentation at the gig where my reader had found the piece was given by this guy, and it was his name on the program. He explained that his workers “assembled” lots of his marketing material (hand-outs, fliers, Powerpoints) for him.

Then he assured me that the fellow in question would be fired. That he (the owner) took this sort of thing very seriously and had a zero-tolerance policy about plagiarism, and that I could rest assured that it wouldn’t happen again.

I told him that what happened between him and his staff was his business. I just wanted to be sure that anything I’d written was attributed to me.

He, again, made the point about firing the subordinate. He said something about him being “a relatively new guy.”

Again, I said, “That’s up to you. It’s your company. How you handle it internally is your business. I just want your word, since it’s your name on my work, that this won’t happen again.”

He, again, told me that the person in question would be fired.

He didn’t get my point. I said, “I don’t need you to do that. I need you to tell me you will be responsible for making sure this doesn’t happen.” He agreed to that, still not getting it, I think, and we never spoke again.

I hung up the phone feeling very, very shaken.

Why? Because one of two things had happened.

1) He lied to me. Which, if I had to bet money, I’d bet on. For a whole string of reasons that I can get into based on the professional services marketing industry, how we come up with stuff, what we let our “people” do for us, etc. etc. But that’s my gut. I don’t think there was “a new guy.” I think it was a put-on to get me to go away.

2) He told the truth, and fired some kid who’d made a mistake. A bad mistake, yeah. And a mistake that, frankly, isn’t one where firing is an inappropriate reaction. But I think that, on some level, if somebody on my staff had done something like that… I would have blamed myself a bit more than this guy seemed to. And if my name was on something like that…
I’d take it a lot more seriously than Katie et CBS al seem to be doing.

The date on which that post went up on the CBS blog page now reads:

Correction: The April 4 Notebook was based on a “Moving On” column by Jeffrey Zaslow that ran in The Wall Street Journal on March 15 with the headline, “Of the Places You’ll Go, Is the Library Still One of Them?” Much of the material in the Notebook came from Mr. Zaslow, and we should have acknowledged that at the top of our piece. We offer our sincere apologies for the omission.

We “apologize for omitting… ” Err… Yah. McNamara (bio still live on CBS site… interesting) was fired for “omitting.” Sins of omission. That’s kinda funny. Where I come from, we call plagiarism “stealing.” Which is a sin of “commission.” You know… walk into a store, take something, leave without paying. Oh. I guess that’s kind of an omission. Never mind…

Here’s the thing: the (maybe) kid that lifted my essay, and/or his boss… that’s pretty minor stuff. One of the reasons I didn’t make a stink is that my “personal brand” has a good dollop of live-and-let-live. I’m a peaceable guy. The piece was a fun little deal that, I hope, sent a few readers to my site/blog. Making a big stink would’ve been more trouble than it was worth.

And yet… and yet… I really, really wish that the dude had said, “What can I do, personally, to make this up to you? Can I send you an Omaha steak? Or make a contribution to a charity in your name? Can I put a mention of your services into my next seminar kit?” Nope. Nothing.

And who is he? Some small-time, Kinko’s-materials consultant like me. But to make it good, he should have offered something.

But… Who is Katie? She’s the $15 million spokes-face on one of the Big Three evening news shows. News. Not fashion. Not punditry. Not opinion. News. You know… that thing with journalism and facts and stuff.

Katie’s post clearly made it seem as if she wrote it. The op-ed “feel” of a story that starts with, “I still remember…” is unmistakably intended to leverage her $15 million-ness into getting us to pay attention to what is, frankly, a pretty lame, puffy piece.

So if Katie didn’t write it, but felt OK about using it glommed onto her image/ego to begin with, and then was (as far as the public is concerned) the face of the company that did the plagiarizing… what should we expect from that organization?

Right. Fire the producer. Not the one worth $60,000/day. Not the face we trust (who apparently doesn’t read the WSJ). Not the one who clearly doesn’t write her own notebook/blog, even when it’s in the first person. Not the one who didn’t take any responsibility for plagiarism, but who had “Editors” apologize for “omissions.”

Is this what Katie wanted for her career? Regardless of the plagiarism… is this what she signed up for? To be part of a news team that writes her “personal thoughts” and then covers for her to an extent that is, frankly, grotesque? Is her own sense of what she brings to this enterprise so withered that she can’t even sign her name to the apology?

Quit, Katie. Just quit. Not because you’re really responsible for the plagiarism. I don’t think you are, nor do I think you should be fired. The ding-dongs in charge at CBS are even less in control and less worthy of it than are you. But in the immediate aftermath of this situation, nobody’s first response was, “Yoiks! These words came out of Katie’s mouth… she should be the one to apologize!”

That they didn’t — that you didn’t — is bad. Real bad. Prove to all the kids in my History of Advertising class, and all the junior copywriters out there, that the Top Dog cares about this. That in the age of easy, Internet Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V, the people we turn to to make sense out of our lives are ones who take that responsibility seriously. That when we turn on the TV to watch somebody talk about war, government, education, health and all kinds of other issues… those issues mean something when applied to her own field.
All I wanted, when somebody stole the words out’n my mouth (er… page), was for the guy in charge to take responsibility. His version of that was to fire the kid who did the lifting. That didn’t cut it for me, and I don’t think it cuts it for Katie.

The $15 million bucks stop somewhere. And it ain’t on the desk of a junior producer.

So, Katie… Make a point about responsibility and theft. Quit in protest over how poorly CBS has handled this situation.

And, since that won’t ever happen, how about you just personally sign your “mea” to the editorial “culpa”?
[Note: I will almost never be this smarmy (mean, call it what you will) again on this blog. I don’t like the tone I’ve chosen, and am *this* close to not publishing the post. But I really, really hate plagiarism and really, really don’t like it when crap like this doesn’t get taken seriously enough by the people in charge. For those of you who prefer my usual, light-hearted, pseudo-intellectual side… it will resume shortly. My apologies for being more churlish than I really rather prefer.]

Another post inspired by conversation with my 7-year-old son…

So, Danny was telling me about an assignment at school where the teacher asked them to draw or describe tools that the Three Little Pigs could have used to help build their respective houses of straw, sticks and bricks. Neat assignment, btw, I thought.

He told me about his ideas, and then went on to tell me about something else that day, I forget what, but the story also involved the number “3.”

“Why,” I asked him, “Do you think the number ‘3′ is in so many stories? Why is it ‘3 pigs’ and ‘3 wise-men’ and ‘3 blind mice’ and all those other ‘3’s?’”

His initial answer proves he’s my son…

“Well,” he replied. “If it were always 9’s, you’d just be asking me the same thing about 9’s, wouldn’t you?”

Right. It has to be something, don’t it? Anyway…

“That’s a good point,” I agreed. “But why should it just be three pigs? Wouldn’t it be a funny story if there were a lot more? Like twelve little pigs? And there their houses were built out of lots of other stuff?”

“Like stuff that’s not hay or twigs or bricks. Weaker or stronger stuff?” he asked.

“Exactly. What would the first pig have used, if it was weaker than hay?”

Dan thought for a second and then said, “Grass?”

“Sure,” I agreed. “That’s weaker than hay. But if we’re going to do twelve… I bet you can think of something even weaker than grass to build a house out of.”

“Cotton candy!”

“Excellent! That’s amazing. That would really be an awful house to hide in from a wolf.”

“What would you choose, Dad?” he asked.

I thought and said, “Bubbles.”

He nodded. “That’s a very weak house.”

“Can you,” I asked, “think of anything worse or weaker than bubbles to build a house out of?”

He paused for a long moment, brow furrowed in concentration before answering.

“Chickens.”

I may have peed a little I laughed so hard. Of course. Because, and he confirmed this was his reasoning, chickens would run around a lot while you tried to build out of them.

So I asked him to list the full Pig House Building Material Manifest of Twelve. It went like this:

• Chickens
• Bubbles (my only contribution)
• Cotton Candy
• Grass
• Paper
• Hay
• Twigs
• Pants (I have no idea… he just inserted this one on his own)
• Bricks
• Concrete
• Iron
• Diamonds held together with Super Glue

That would be such a better story.

When he was done, he wanted to know if he could add one more. I said, of course, “Sure.”

“I think,” he said, “it would really freak the wolf out if you built a house out of wolves.”

I agree. I truly, deeply agree.
The moral of this story for writers and creative types is… multiply. If you have three blind mice… how would the song change if it were 300? Farmer’s wife… watch out! The song “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” really only lists 5… can you think of 45 more?
“Then the pigs built a house of pants…”

Totally cracks me up. I have no idea what it means, but I love it.